Midnight Without A Moon- Pre-Release Giveaway!

This holiday season, I've bought a lot of books to give as gifts. When I stopped at my local indie bookstore last week, I pre-ordered copies of Linda Williams Jackson's upcoming Midnight Without A Moon. Linda and I know each other from my early days in the blogging community, and I was thrilled when I first heard about the book. After reading an advanced copy, I knew it was something special that I wanted to share with people.

It comes out on January 3rd, just three weeks from now! Leave a comment on this post to be entered to win a copy~ I'll choose a winner on 12/19 (if your email address is not attached to your profile, please include it in your comment). UPDATE: The winner is.... Caryn Caldwell! Congratulations, Caryn, it's a special book. Thank you to all who entered~ I hope you all get the chance to read this once it comes out in January!

Here's a summary (my review is below that):

It’s Mississippi in the summer of 1955, and Rose Lee Carter can’t wait to move north. But for now, she’s living with her sharecropper grandparents on a white man’s cotton plantation. 

     

Then, one town over, an African American boy, Emmett Till, is killed for allegedly whistling at a white woman. When Till’s murderers are unjustly acquitted, Rose realizes that the South needs a change . . . and that she should be part of the movement.  

     

Linda Jackson’s moving debut seamlessly blends a fictional portrait of an African American family and factual events from a famous trial that provoked change in race relations in the United States.

My review:

This is the powerful story of Rose Lee Carter and her journey to find strength and purpose in a Jim Crow South on the verge of changes, set against fourteen-year-old Emmett Till's murder and trial (among other tragic, bigoted crimes). Vividly drawn characters and scene-setting will put readers right there with Rose, bursting with anger and sadness about the injustices she witnesses and endures, and struggling to make a decision about whether to seek a destiny outside of Mississippi, or to stay and be part of an important movement.

This book has it all from the first page~ setting, voice, character, heart, senses. Linda Williams Jackson's debut is just what Sharon G. Flake said in the blurb on the back of the ARC I read: "... an unflinching bird's eye view of 1955 Mississippi. A magnificent piece of writing!"

Bio courtesy of Linda's website: http://lindajacksonwrites.blogspot.com/
Born and raised in the Mississippi Delta in the teeny-tiny town of Rosedale , Linda Williams Jackson likes to spin stories about everyday people in small-town settings. Though she has lived in a few other states (Alabama, Missouri, and Kansas), Linda currently makes her home in a not-so-small city in Mississippi with her husband and three children.

While a degree in Math and Computer Science from the University of Alabama allowed her to enjoy careers in Information Technology, Linda now prefers manipulating words rather than numbers and symbols. Besides her debut middle-grade novel Midnight Without a Moon from HMH Books for Young Readers (January 3, 2017), Linda is published in multiple Chicken Soup for the Soul titles and has written reading assessment passages for various educational publishers.